As part of my grudging admission of defeat in the debate over whether this site is a blog (as it turns out, it is), I am opening up the floor and allowing visitors to post comments. This is an experiment only partially motivated by my desire to increase value for shareholders. I hope all three […]

Since I first started monitoring traffic reports for this website, I have been fascinated and confused by the kinds of visitors it attracts. The Middle East and South Asia seem to be disproportionately represented, with India, the UAE, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia all taking spots on the All-Time Top 20 Countries List. Uruguay makes […]

I’ve never been in a city where estimates of population vary so wildly from person to person. Depending on whom I ask, there are anywhere between 10 and 30 million Beijing residents. And then there is the question of whether any official number takes into account the millions of migrant workers toiling day and night […]

It’s just after Christmas in Beijing, which puts us firmly in the middle of Coal and Cabbage season. Oddly enough, the huge piles of cabbage that overtook the sidewalks at my university last year do not seem to have materialised again.
Coal, on the other hand, is still abundant. While the use of coal for household […]

I’ve come across a site called BlogShares, a sort of stock market game for blogs. I have registered brezhnev.net there in the hopes that I will be able to ride this site’s virtual IPO to unimaginable virtual riches. Of course, I am at the mercy of the market; valuation is determined by the number of […]